an apple pie, baked w/ bitterness...

this morning, i woke up and i just felt off my game. i don't know if you've ever had a day like this: when you feel like you're just not you. you look in the mirror and you see all your faults instead of your beauty. you feel heavier than usual. your self talk says "you just made an idiot out of yourself" than "you can do it." even your favorite foods just don't taste the same. in other words, you're a real eeyore:

{ironically, when my best friend moved away in elementary school, i claimed that eeyore was my new best friend...}

that's how i felt this morning. and i faced a family reunion (a completely DRY family reunion, if ya know what i mean...). i knew i needed to get myself together. i also knew i needed to bake an apple pie. my mum is not a good cook; mostly she just hates to cook, even though she's pretty good at it. so every year for my aunt's fourth of july party, she asks me what she's making, buys the ingredients, and has me make it. so this year, i baked an apple pie (very patriotic of me, i know).

baking apple pie always reminds me of my college mentor, morgan whiteleather. the first time i ever came to her for mentoring, she had me over at her apartment in new wilmington. this apartment was like...one of my favorite places in the world. she had candles melted on wine bottles, and her bathroom had inspirational quotes on the walls (really handy if you just needed that extra push!!). it always smelled like nutmeg or some kind of baking spice. we baked an apple pie together using morgan's grandmother's recipe (the key is to use lard in the pie crust...haven't made it that way since, i just used this recipe).

as we baked the pie, morgan said to me:

the great thing about baking is you start with ordinary things. you mix them together and they look disgusting; they become a total mess. then you hand it over to the oven, and it turns it into something really incredible. that's what we're going to do. we're going to talk about the ordinary things in your life. we're going to talk about the messiest of the messy. and we're going to give it over to God, and over time, God will turn that mess in to something spectacular.

on the surface, this might sound kind of cheesy, but truly, these were probably some of the most profound words ever spoken to me, and it has become the mantra of my life: God really does some spectacular things in our messiest situations. so this morning as i baked my pie. i made a complete mess out of the kitchen (i would literally sell a kidney for a dish-washer), and i thought through my own mess. and pulling that perfect pie out of the oven really was what i needed to remind me that God is at work, even in my ugliest, most cynical and dark moments.

{this is legitimately my pie. check out the stars i cut into it. you better watch your ass, martha stewart!!!}

most people say that the secret to a scrumptious baked good is that it's baked with love. well, i bake with bitterness, and it turns out pretty sweet to me!! {oh Lord, i really do sound like i'm channeling martha stewart's spirit...}

what are the things that you do that put your pieces back together when you're having an off day?